A former lawmaker who represented Kaduna Central Senatorial District, Senator Shehu Sani, has fingered failure to educate nomads as a reason over 10,000 schools in the North are shut down due to kidnapping and terrorism.
Sani, who spoke at the 15th Ralph Opara Memorial Lecture on Girl Child Education, organised by the National Association of Seadogs, NAS, in Kaduna, stated that those engaged in banditry and terrorism were young people between the ages of 20 and 30.
While calling on President Bola Tinubu to invest in education, security and agriculture, he said: “If we had provided them the education they need, they wouldn’t be carrying arms and attacking people.
“If we want to get the issue of security and education right in the North, we need to be serious about the issue of education. If Northern Nigeria wants to get it right, it must invest in education. The schools that produced the best brains in Nigeria are uninhabitable today. They are no longer conducive for learning. We have seen how kidnapping and terrorism destroyed public education in Nigeria”.
“Look at what happened to girls at Federal Government College Yauri. Look at what happened to young girls at a college in Zamfara State. Look at what happened even in Kaduna State. Terrorism has become a serious problem as far as education in Nigeria is concerned. We need to get things right and we have to do it now.
“People now pay taxes and levies to terrorists before they can be allowed to go to their farms. There are parts of the state today where rural dwellers call on other terror groups to protect them from other terrorists. So, you can see how this country is gradually collapsing. What is right should be done.
“We should support the Service Chiefs. We should support the National Security Adviser to do whatever they can to secure this country. The use of Northern sentiment or regional sentiment would not help because we had the opportunity to get it right and we failed to do it.”